Free fall
by emptysummer
Summary: The flock and saving the world. As long as they were safe Max didn't care. Four times they failed and one time they succeeded. Oneshot


**Free fall**

Maximum Ride oneshot. AU. Heads up Max dies. A lot.

I already ranted about the awesomeness of childhood books even if they spawn massive amounts of fanfic (that's in _There was a boy_ if you're interested), I currently have twenty-three, now twenty-two works in progress and five essays due on Wednesday (two completed) and a major case of writer's block, not in the sense that I can't write anything but I can't complete anything. If I didn't finish something I would have gone mad hence this. Four instead of the traditional five because again- writer's block. One is canon.

Also challenge for anyone looking for a prompt. "Dreams die too. Her (or his) feet bleed." Any fandom, any paring. PM me if you write it. I'd definitely be interested.

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><p>[1]<p>

The first time around they spend most of their time destroying the ones who created them. Itex can't begrudge them that.

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><p>2]<p>

Her name is Max, short for Maxine. They come to her when she's seventeen, whitecoats not that she knows that word. She lives with her older sister and her dad skipped out on them when she was young but her mom is awesome (especially her cookies). Too young to make that choice but she was even younger the last time around.

"I always wanted to fly." She says seventeen the whole world in her eyes.

They give her until she turns eighteen and she wakes aching in a lab, wingspan massive. Two months and they throw her in a pit with a boy she's never seen before.

"Hello Fang." Her brain doesn't quite catch her mouth and it's confusing because _she doesn't know him. _The whitecoats want a fight and she's in motion before he's figured it out. She wins only because he let her (because he always let her win) and she shakes away the stray thought. When they throw them into yet another cell she's checking his spilt lip before her mind catches up with her body.

Flock. Her mind whispers. Family, love, protect, _mine_.

He smiles through the black eye she gave him and says "My name's not Fang."

"I figured that wasn't likely."

"And your name probably isn't Max."

Her breath catches for a moment. And when it returns to normal he's smiling. She smiles back not hesitant at all because she doesn't know him (but she does).

His name is David, only son of a single mother. He was recruited into the military at seventeen. Approached by the whitecoats after basic because he always wanted to fly. He would have been a pilot if this hadn't come along.

Couple of months later there's another boy in their cell. And he gets it too.

"Fang you never told me Max was hot."

Iggy is the instant reaction, knee jerk as his exclamation and Fang's glare. He can see but he shouldn't be able to. All wrong her head screams.

His name is James, only child of a (relatively) happily married couple. He had a thing for matches and edges over empty space. He was recruited by the whitecoats in the guise of a reform college which his parents hadn't examined too closely as they wanted a son without an obsession for fire or the thrill of falling.

Now they're waiting. "Three more." Max mutters and she remembers the most out of all of them so they listen when she speaks.

They're training, becoming weapons (Fang is stealth, quick and quiet, dark, and Iggy is fires and bombs, loud, flashy, bright, and Max is undefeatable in the air, untouchable in the sky.) It doesn't feel unfamiliar.

The attack on the base they're in comes three day before Nudge would have turned eighteen. They fight as they have been trained all fists and kicks and furious upward beats to spread their weight. Iggy (James) throws one of the bombs they've stockpiled done the hall and it blows everything out of their way and they're sprinting and outside for the first time in nearly two years they're breathing free air. For a moment they are flying free.

They make it two hundred meters before the failsafe snaps and they fall wings crippled. Max was so high, Icarus tumbling from a golden sun.

It's safe to say she didn't feel the impact that snapped her neck.

* * *

><p>[3]<p>

Her name is Max and she's ten living with her dad. He told her to call him that but most of the time she says Jeb before Dad and he looks so old, too old to be the father of a ten year old. His eyes look sad and she attempts to cheer him. He is her father. If she were older she would recognize the regret. If she could remember she'd realize he isn't allowed to regret.

He made his bed. Let him lie in it.

She has wings the only one like this he assures her, one of a kind. (Sometimes she looks at him and knows he's lying. Sometimes she dreams of others.)

She finds a device in the drawer of his office (a pen, black, with a line of lights built into the body). She clicks it just once (light and pain, family, hope, wings and feathers).

She remembers.

There is a gun in the bottom drawer (and what movie was it that Gazzy had loved talking about hostile negotiations in his Bond voice?). That's what happens- hostile negotiations. Her and Jeb in a room, loaded gun between them, honestly she's surprised she _didn't _shoot him.

Protection for the Flock, she doesn't have to see him ever again and in exchange? The Maximum of course.

She's fifteen and her DNA's been tweaked so she's got most of their powers when she runs into a seven-year Angel at a park. She's just back from South America, something about drug dealers and gunrunners. They didn't really give her the details, just pointed her in that direction.

She's in warp mode and fifteen minutes ahead of schedule so why the hell not. She was never in all of her lifetimes been a child but it's nice to pretend. She sits on the swings and idly pumps her legs watching the kids play.

The blonde woman looks harried, clutching Angel and Gazzy to her side. She releases their hands as they cross the fence and settles on the park bench fussing with her purse.

Angel cocks her head at Max. _I don't know you do I? _She asks voice echoing.

_Not anymore. _

Gazzy has been tossing the ball with other kids and the kid opposite overthrows tossing it over The Gasman's shoulder into the road. "I'll get it."

This isn't going to end well if even Max can spot it coming.

It's a truck in the road and a distracted driver and Max going faster then she's ever gone before. He's out of the road. She throws him away and takes the hit like there's nothing she would rather do.

Even she can't survive that.

Angel's there and holding her hand and her last thought- _you were always my favorite._

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><p>[4]<p>

"Max" Angel says to Gazzy. (Owen, his name is Owen, and she has to remember that.) It's her first word and their mother purses her lips and leaves alone them in the nursery.

"Max" Angel says to Owen. She's nearly two now and she has the words now. "Where is she?" "Shh. I don't know."

The next four years pass similarly with their mother ignoring Angel's cries for a girl they've never met.

"I've found her." Angel says to Owen the day she turns six. It's a printout of a girl shoulder to shoulder with a tall dark boy. Local martial arts student wins championship reads the headline and the image is of Max Martinez and her foster brother David.

"Max and Fang. We have to find them. The town isn't that far away."

It's stupid, they've never met these kids but Angel threatens to go on her own if he doesn't come with her so they steal their mum's credit card and buy bus tickets to the source of the article.

They're lucky living in small town America, the bus driver keeps an eye on them, and they're careful to mention an aunt waiting for them at their destination so she doesn't get too suspicious.

The town is tiny, one main street everybody else living spread out around it. They find the karate dojo easily enough, and hang out in the cafe across the street. Owen is trying to persuade her that this is a Bad Idea (capital letters audible) when the door across the street opens and two teenagers walk out, duffle bags swung over their shoulders. They're laughing, openly happy and Angel has never seen Max look like that. She's going to let them pass, agree with Gazzy and go home, her throat tight, but they step into the café and it's too late. _Max, _Angel calls, and she looks up. Her expression closes just for a moment, and then Fang nudges her and she smiles, telling him to get her usual. She crosses to them in three strides and gathers them up in her arms. Hugging both of them like it's been years and it has.

Overhead the camera twitches.

The last thing they hear before the room is gassed is "It's too early."

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><p>[+1]<p>

They grow up in the same town, Fang and Iggy, the adopted children of a childless couple, and Ella raises Max. They have the run of the neighborhood, Max's little gang, Max's flock, and she's indisputably in charge for all that she's a girl.

They are five when the single mother moves into the house across from Max's, and a two-year old girl takes to toddling after them, babbling. Max calls her Nudge and somehow the nickname sticks, to the point that her mother calls for her by that name not her birth name.

A year later a pregnant couple moves into the oldest house on the street and they are in and out of the house as much as they are in and out of their own houses. When the baby is born, he's heavy, blue eyed, blonde and gassy as can be. Max dubs him the Gasman over his parent's protests, and when he's old enough they push him along to the park with them, in a baby's stroller.

His sister is born on the same day Max turns eight and she claims the little girl as her birthday gift. Her parents name her Angel and after that they only ever have joint birthday parties.

They're happy kids. Daring and so unafraid of heights that their parents refuse to let them climb trees. They do it anyway, climbing high enough to look out over the entire town, to feel the wind on their faces, and through imagined wings.

They can't fly and that is the only scar on their childhood.

The world is not in a good place, overcrowded rapidly heating. Resources are getting scarcer and the few times they leave the town they learn that world outside is an ugly place.

Max grows wings when she turns fourteen. Fang and Iggy follow in quick succession. There are no secrets among them so they all know. The nickname the group has is suddenly more appropriate. They hide them because high school is hell without complications and this is a major complication.

But sometimes, sometimes they go flying wings brushing each other's gently. Max and Fang do the hormonal thing and date but when they break up it doesn't hurt the flock because they're too close for that.

Nudge turns fourteen and sprouts wings as the oldest three enter their senior year of high school. Max wants to save the world and is looking for solutions for the problems. Fang is learning to fight because somebody's got to protect Max when she saves the world. Iggy is learning how to make bombs and other questionable skills because what's coming- it's not going to be peaceful. Nudge learns how to talk to people and while she's got nowhere near Max's level of charisma but she can convince others and that's going to be necessary.

Angel and Gazzy's family takes them on a trip to their grandparents and they don't come back, and the flock is going to remake the world that much sooner.

A revolution because this is their world and they will not give it up as earlier generations have.

It begins tomorrow.

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><p>Comments are lovely things that make me want to write more, hint, hint.<p> 


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